


Gethsemane

by madamerosencrantz



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Character Death, Gen, I think it's supposed to be sad?, More poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 09:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamerosencrantz/pseuds/madamerosencrantz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Drabble Based off Jesus Christ Superstar’s “Gethsemane”<br/>Les Miserables</p><p>Enjolras had always been a favorite of Passion. He harbored it, and with his growth- Passion grew. It developed, and Enjolras found his purpose within the People and her mistress, Justice. They should be the two composing civilization-This was Patria.<br/>By the time he was twenty-two, it was no longer simply a man who spoke. It was man who had allowed himself to be shaped by Purpose to watch Patria find her glory; he became the puppet of his purpose, whose driver was Passion. It coiled, thrived, sung in his ear. Destruction would not be long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gethsemane

Passion, that desired and tricky creature. It coils, thrives, sings, and destroys. That spirit is the same that leads a person in life. It is the same spirit that leads into death. Perhaps it is not so much a spirit, a manifestation of thought and character, as it is a creature. Is Passion alive, purposely seeking home and shelter within the soul?  
They cast a shadow; within the same moment that the world is opened unto you, the boxes are set. Some days, as a cloud drifts from the single radiating gem of the skies, the strict borders surrounding that field which is human perspective become indistinguishable from that natural terrain. Suddenly the world is large again. Abruptly, you are lost. The risk is there, and you can see the void that could result-  
However, that is only at times. While Passion will act as the cloud covering the sun, it often secretes that sense of clarity. With this devious and vivacious creature implanted in our souls, it is easier to see a purpose that is so often camouflaged.

Enjolras had always been a favorite of Passion. He harbored it, and with his growth- Passion grew. It developed, and Enjolras found his purpose within the People and her mistress, Justice. They should be the two composing civilization-This was Patria.  
By the time he was twenty-two, it was no longer simply a man who spoke. It was man who had allowed himself to be shaped by Purpose to watch Patria find her glory; he became the puppet of his purpose, whose driver was Passion. It coiled, thrived, sung in his ear. Destruction would not be long.  
There were temptations, of course. They were not serious enough to that passion worried, but they were enough to leave Enjolras with instances in which he found himself stilled. On the fragile appendages of an insect, questions would begin to slip over the borders. These questions were the solitary beams of light that escaped the atmosphere’s shroud. Any display of contrasting intensities of light confuses. The man would barely shiver, instead taking a sharp breath of the Parisian air and straightening. The man who had written himself in marble would continue, and the questions would falter. Passion, nestled within its modest throne, would relax and thrum with energy once more.

These questions with creeping limbs always returned. The insects thrived in the environment of students who had assembled, having been guided by similar passions. However, rhey weren’t governed by the same purpose that dictated Enjolras. There was Combeferre, who felt the lady Progress rest her hand on his shoulder; Courfeyrac, with whom a fire’s warmth erupted in his heart. He wished for nothing but that live should be enjoyable. Joly and Bossuet found their guides in goodwill, while Prouvaire sought his in the beauty of both tragedy and love. Hestia of the hearth and home led Feuilly, a workingman. Grantaire, meanwhile, was governed by nothing. A rule had been evicted and cast aside, leaving an empty throne. There was no fight for power for this throne- Instead, hallow eyes were simply cast upon the sight. Grantaire had been blinded; his quest now was simply for the light. And then there was Bahorel, who had rebuked the governor of his person. He was now a self-claimed man.

Precisely because of the diversity of such leaders did the insects thrive. Some could slip past the borders, unnoticed. Still they would creep onto the mind’s perspective, gently shifting the line that the mind’s eye followed. Others were less tactful, having been directly thrown at Enjolras, so that the force of the question would cause him to double over.  
Passion doubled its effort, energy sparkling as its wry lips tightened into a smile full of both life and anxiety. Insects were the termites of Passion. Under their attention, the devious and vivacious creature would decay and crumble, leaving in its wake a shell. Fortunate, then, that Enjolras’ vision was hazy. Fortunate, then, that the creature that Enjolras had been tethered to was strong, shielded still by layers of diamond and steel. Through him now, Passion spoke. Words filled with the glorious blaze of flames reached out to the listening ear as Enjolras stood now in a the backroom of an aged café that stood among shops that appeared as though they had not been touched in twenty years. It was here that Enjolras stood, speaking with his eyes, his voice. He spoke with his hands, gesturing in such a way that beckoned for the attention of the students also occupying the room to gravitate towards him, towards the cause.  
However, the utter attention of an audience can only be captivated by the same force for so long. Were a scientist conducting a study of the duration of a crowd’s attention to a expert speaker whose topic was among the most tedious of subjects, he might find that focus begins to teeter after approximately an hour and fifteen minutes. At that point, the crowd divides itself inter smaller sects. They talk quietly among themselves, and Enjolras doesn’t notice. Occasionally, a louder swell of laughter would erupt from a section of the room, and the guilty would earn a reproachful, stern look from Enjolras. The swell would quiet again, and Enjolras would continue. When Passion drew him to end his speech, he would assign tasks to this collection of students with the intention of drawing more attention to their cause. That was to be the official end of the meeting, though the students often lingered. With the progression of the evening, the men consumed drink until the meeting had transformed into that of companions.  
It was at this point in the evening that Enjolras often retreated into himself, keeping himself open for conversation, should it come. Otherwise, he worked, often alongside Combeferre. They worked diligently; one did so because he shaped himself into a man of marble, the other worked because the lady Progress filled him with the will to do so. There were times, however, when Courfeyerac, with all his warmth, would fling his arms around either man. He’d encourage them with twinkling eyes that there was time, that the night beckoned for both of them. Courfeyrac would straighten then, upon receiving little to no reaction. Not to accept defeat so easily, fingers would snatch Combeferre’s glasses nimbly, inspecting them delicately before propping them on the bridge of his nose as he bounced on the balls of his feet. In response, Combeferre usually resigned himself wearily from his work in pursuit of his sight, only to be drawn into the night’s company.  
Enjolras, Courfeyrac found, was more difficult to pull into the bustle of the Amis. His favorite solution, bringing the Amis to Enjolras, was simple. Courferyac functioned like the heart of a body, pumping life continuously the group that bonded them as friends. Thus, he became the center, and as the center, all he needed to do to pull the rest of circle to Enjolras was go there himself. Thus, Courfeyrac would drape himself over Enjolras’ lap; as he did so, one hand would creep to the table surface to push papers and books to the side. Despite the irritable scowl that would cross onto Enjolras’ face, the Amis would gradually filter into the new space, this time including Enjolras, before he could protest.  
Such was system of the Amis at the Café Musain. If Enjolras or Combeferre were to join the festivities, someone, typically Courfeyrac, would need to bring the company. The man of marble thought little of it, as Passion ruled with a stern hand.

 

Although structured with marble, Enjolras was a man. In reality, perhaps he was more of a boy than a man, but the reality simply stated that he was human. He was not unfeeling.  
Upon the barricade, there had been a man who had committed an injustice. An innocent civilian’s life had been wiped from the world at the hand of this criminal, and Enjolras- Servant to Patria, composed of Justice and the People- Had sentenced the man to death. Passion and moral uprightness had whispered into his ear that here was the purpose he had sought. Here was the world that he had been fighting for, and here he was with a gun in his hand directed at the head of this man.  
The man deserved it. It was just; it was necessary.  
He did pull the trigger, and he did see what seemed to be the precise moment in which the man, Le Cabuc, had his life justly stolen. Was justice to watch the blood still in another being, even if he had wronged? What had been life simply becomes substance, and this had been what his life had been dedicated to. Insects that had before crept onto him to be brushed off with an absent hand returned. The pests in swarms returned- Things that people had said and doubts. This had been what his life had been dedicated to, and now he stand upon a barricade. Now the man of marble begins to shape Passion- There is no time to question, no time to feel the structure of a previous wall fade slowly into dust as a new wall is constructed. His death is inevitable, and the processes of self-deterioration are halted for it. The End is something secure, and looking at it from such proximity there is little fear. There he would find the justice that he had sought in life. Le Cabuc was dead. Purpose shifted under a new master, a new cloud within the mind’s sky. The new atmosphere of clarity showed Enjolras that the barricade was not solely to be for justice, but to love. 

Futures and countless possibilities were ripped from soldiers and revolutionaries at the barricade. Death stained the eyes of the lifeless and painted the expressions of the living. Fear and acceptance mingled together into waves that pushed ceaselessly into the souls of those who struggled. They struggled and dropped a moment later as easily as a leaf falling from a tree during the autumn. Red flooded the scene, and was this justice? To see those with whom you had shared company and those whom you had led and organized perish- Is it justice to be the last to die when you, arguably, are the reason for these deaths? Yes.  
Passion for the cause is still there. Death was a high price to buy a place in that cause, but a fair one. Was this justice? 

Often, Enjolras chosen to sit as a separate unit when he was among the Amis; such could be attributed to his position as leader, one who is constantly looked upon something not entirely within a space, but perhaps floating above it in a different plane. The primary suspect for such a separation is his Passion, that devious and vivacious creature. The same creature that had led him onto a different plane also leads him to his death. Alone, he faces the eager fingers of justice that will that will soon prove what had been marble to only be a man. And Enjolras knew it. Numb from killing, numb from witnessing his companions’ falling, there was a moment in which he blinked. A moment, and the purposeful hand of Patria, who had suffocated him lost her grip. And why should she strangle him in the moments before his body, like those of the soldiers and the Amis, was to litter the ground? There was no resistance of death, no less belief in that for which he fought. 

But there was fatigue. Enjolras was twenty-two years of age, and he could see- If only for a moment- That he had poisoned himself, condemned himself to die when he allowed Passion to become one with the blood that coursed through his veins. He was tired. The waves of fear and acceptance that had before lapped at him rose, crashing against him. They could push him down, he knew. The whirls of fear swirled into him, and for a moment again the world was vast. It was endless, like time. The leader, whose spirit had always soared with Passion’s grip, was mitigated. Indeed, the cynicism of Grantaire came back to him. Would lives have fallen with no purpose? Would it be just another repeat of history, looping over and over incessantly. Nothing original, nothing to stand out.  
His mistress clamped her fist down on him once more, but not before a taste of something new intrigued his tongue. He now met regret. With the death of Le Cabuc, he had recognized love as a force equally worth as justice. Now, as he straightens himself, prepared to face the explosive hand of death, Enjolras sees that the world he now strives to achieve is something that his person had been closed to. Being drawn into the company of the Amis in those evenings was, indeed, something he had overlooked. An echo of a voice, the first to die, spoke that Enjolras had been “A man of the people without living as a person.” Perhaps that was more accurate now than it had been. 

Men of the National Guard neared, their steps creaking upon wooden beams of that aged café. There were shouts that he barely recognized as he was named the leader of the Amis; most of the men stopped in front of him, but some surged past, checking for any other of the revolutionaries. The crack of a cold shot rang out as a lost man had barely woken, had barely stood from his drunken stupor, fell the ground. Another addition to the litter of lives that were no more transforming matter. Enjolras sucked in a breath, seeing the figure fall.  
He would meet his justice soon, and he demanded it. 

When Enjolras’ body fell, Passion released him. She has no use for a corpse. With eight bullets sheathed within his flesh, the self-constructed man of marble whose soul burned so brightly was extinguished. Close to society, but still away was his life; the same was his death. Another body littered ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I found the expression that Katie Hall used in singing the song quite inspiring, so I needed to write it. Thanks for reading! {{ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucHuxZ0QA7g }}


End file.
